Climate models

Global climate change is the result of complex interactions between the atmosphere, the oceans, the land surface, ice and our ecosystems. To understand these relationships, we need models that not only describe the physics of the climate, but also how vegetation, land use and the carbon and water cycles influence the climate.

At the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, we combine ecosystem modelling and Earth system modelling. This means that we study how vegetation, forests, wetlands and land processes change over time and interact with the climate, from local to global scales and from historical conditions to future scenarios.

Examples of research questions and applications within climate modelling:

• analyses of the terrestrial carbon cycle at regional and global scales
• studies of how soil and vegetation processes interact with the climate system
• feedback loops between permafrost, carbon and climate, including methane
• analyses of forest dynamics and how forest management affects forest ecosystem services
• effects of climate change and land use on forest disturbances, such as fire and pest infestations

Practical applications

The climate models developed and used at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences are included both in international comparisons of climate models and in ongoing research projects aimed at better understanding how ecosystems and climate interact.

The European Earth System Model, EC-Earth, participates in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6 and CMIP7 (ongoing)), in which climate models from around the world are compared. The results from CMIP are used as an important scientific basis in the reports of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The models are also used for regional studies, which analyse how global climate change has different consequences in different parts of the world, for example in Europe or the Arctic.

On the subpages, you can read more about each model and how they are used in research at the Department of Environmental and Earth Sciences.

• LPJ‑GUESS – ecosystem model
• EC‑Earth – European Earth system model
• RCA‑GUESS – regional climate modelling